“Find the 2 and you will be kissed tomorrow. 555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555: A Car Show”
Saturday, June 24, 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Peter Piper Pizza parking lot
Yarbrough Plaza
10501 Gateway West
El Paso, TX 79925
digital mockup
Six new paintings on car covers look to promote US/Mexican border culture awareness by subverting conventional art making ideas through rogue exhibitions. These artworks will be impermissibly displayed as car shows. The painted covers will be draped over vehicles at retail parking lots in El Paso, Texas and later in Newark, Ohio.
Traveling to the birthplace of the lowrider and researching formations of these Mexican-American customized vehicles, and their derivatives, will guide the creation of these painted forms. The paintings will be crafted individually in El Paso during the visit, with each piece inspired by investigations of city wanderings, car club meet-ups, late night cruisers, and visiting custom auto body shops. The painted car covers will point back to the region, people, and culture they influenced, acting as an indirect ambassador to border culture. Exhibitions of these car covers will be used to combat misconceptions about the region that have been increasingly sensationalized surrounding the rhetoric of our current presidential administration. The unexpected and unsolicited public encounters between the artworks and viewers aspire to provoke curiosity, discussion and impact change.
Represented here will be lives hedged between two worlds: the abstract and the recognizable, 2D and 3D, art and utility, Spanish and English, tomayto and tomahto. The presented works will be neither one thing or the other, not truly this or that, but this AND that. Unclear definitions, unrecognizable forms and foreign bodies can activate insecurities or even fear; butt, through nervous laughter, these works will instill hybridization as a positive, letting passersby question their place in relation to the works, perceptual and/or otherwise, mid-giggle. The goal is to embrace ambiguity as a means for wonder, a site to probe freely, to imagine, resist and rebel – illuminating productive spaces situated between belief and disbelief.
KEITH ALLyN SPENCER (b.1979) was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. An emphasis with the middle letter of his name helps diminish the perpetual mix-ups with similar named persons. Currently, Kurt resides with his family in central Ohio. He is an Assistant Professor at Denison University navigating towards long-term job security, cul-de-sacs, and organic groceries. Kent received his MFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Fine Arts (2011) and a BFA from the University of Texas at El Paso (2003). BlackLivesMatter. Recent group exhibitions consist of Skylab Gallery (Columbus), Present Company (NYC), New Galerie at Yves Klein Archives (Paris), Simon Oldfield Gallery (London), and BigMedium (Austin). Recent solo shows include Ditch Projects (Oregon), The Composing Rooms (Berlin), Welcome Screen (London), Juicys Gallery (NYC), OFG.XXX (Dallas), Target (Indiana), and Domino’s Pizza (Rhode Island).